Jerome Powell’s Last Stand at the Fed

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**Jessica Mendoza** (0:35)
Jerome Powell was supposed to retire quietly. The way our colleague Nick Timiraos tells it, Powell's life after eight years leading the Fed was supposed to be simple.

**Nick Timiraos** (0:49)
Friends will tell you the picture, golf, guitar, philanthropy, time with grandkids, maybe a memoir somewhere down the line.
Everybody has their way-relief stress, and Powell's is to play the guitar. Hank Williams ballads.

**Jessica Mendoza** (1:07)
Less monetary policy, more Hank Williams. That was the exit plan, and tomorrow was set to be Powell's last day, as a newly confirmed Fed chair takes the reins.

**Nick Timiraos** (1:18)
From people I've talked to, he was genuinely looking forward to it. He was counting down the days.

**Jessica Mendoza** (1:29)
But just weeks before that exit.

**Jerome Powell** (1:31)
This is my last press conference as chair, and I will close with a few thoughts.

**Jessica Mendoza** (1:36)
Powell had an announcement. He would step down as chair, but in a break from more than 75 years of Fed tradition, he would not leave the Fed.

**Jerome Powell** (1:46)
After my term as chair ends on May 15, I will continue to serve as a governor for a period of time to be determined.

**Jessica Mendoza** (1:54)
Almost immediately, critics pounced.

**SPEAKER_6** (1:58)
This is a violation of all Federal Reserve norms.

**SPEAKER_2** (2:01)
If you believe in the independence of the Fed, then Jay Powell himself needs to leave.

**Jessica Mendoza** (2:06)
But Powell said he saw no other option.

**Jerome Powell** (2:10)
I had long planned to be retiring. The things that have happened really in the last three months have I think left me no choice but to stay until I see them.

**Nick Timiraos** (2:20)
He said he felt like he had no choice. And I read that as this is really the last card he could play. And he doesn't think that he can walk away from the job, while the relationship between the Federal Reserve and the executive branch is in as bad a state as it is.
This is about protecting the institution.

**Jessica Mendoza** (2:47)
Welcome to The Journal, our show about money, business and power. I'm Jessica Mendoza. It's Thursday, May 14th.
Coming up on the show, why Jerome Powell just can't quit the Fed.
Nick Timiraos has been covering Jerome Powell and the Fed for nearly a decade. He talks regularly with people who work closely with Powell and people who know him personally. That's given Nick a sense of how Powell thinks. One thing that's always stuck with Nick, an unusual talent that actually tells us a lot about Powell's leadership style. I asked Nick about it.

**Nick Timiraos** (3:42)
I think you're referring to this knack he has for repeating sentences backwards. So if you say something, he can just take it and tell you what you just said in reverse order.

**Jessica Mendoza** (3:55)
Had he ever done that with you?

**Nick Timiraos** (3:57)
I have not seen him do it. It's kind of an awkward thing to do in the moment.
I think it speaks to how his superpower has been his listening. Whether it's meeting with his colleagues, meeting with politicians on Capitol Hill, he's in listen mode.

**Jessica Mendoza** (4:19)
And he used that skill to build relationships. Here he is in an interview from 2018

**Jerome Powell** (4:24)
I'm going to wear the carpets of Capitol Hill out by walking those halls and meeting with members I feel.

**Nick Timiraos** (4:30)
Never mind that there really aren't carpets on Capitol Hill, but the point stands.
He knew that whatever was coming, those relationships were going to matter. You know something's going to happen and it's good to have allies.

**Jessica Mendoza** (4:44)
And Powell may have been right. Because while his term as Fed chair can be seen through a series of economic crises, it can be told another way, as the story of a relationship that broke down between Powell and the president who hired him, Donald Trump.
The strain between Trump and Powell started to show up just months after Trump appointed him in his first term. In 2018, the Fed was worried the economy might get overheated, so it raised interest rates slowly throughout the year.

**Nick Timiraos** (5:17)
Four interest rate increases. By the end of the year, Trump hated it.